Mem(e)oir Material

Super happy to inform you that my #tuesdaytransformation is brought to you by me (?). Because I rarely change and in fact, when asked to, I usually respond by making it my mission to staying 💯% the same. That – and I never finish anything I start no matter how much that thing meant to me at one time or another. Because I either fear failure or I fear success 🤷🏼‍♀️So when I finally decided I needed like, an adulting test run around 6 months ago, after three years of chronic pain, brain fog and depression, I found out sugar was making me sick and was like f that and I’ve been gluten/dairy/sugar-free ever since. JUST to prove to everyone including me that I could actually stick to something for once in my life – like other adults seem to do so naturally. So did that ✔️ and the fact that I’m posting a photo like this is just the icing on the 🎂 because I was overweight until my twenties and still felt it until like, a year ago because it’s a tough thing to get past. Now I just feel good. Kinda like a #badbitch 🥊🧘‍♀️

Today I had probably the most empowering and emotionally gratifying moment of my life and I’m pretty sure no one noticed. That’s actually the emotionally gratifying part, strangely. That I was able to actually see that the moments that hold the most weight and take up the most space in your heart should be shared with others but they don’t mean anything if they don’t primarily occur within your own self. More importantly, I was able to see those moments finally happen in me.

When I saw a glimpse of my old self today for the first time in about 7 years I regained the little bit of hope that I’d lost believing I’d ever see me again. That me is the one who has driven me to literally hundreds of late night ‘google research’ sessions – 6 different doctors, 3 false diagnoses, 2 surgical procedures (that it turns out I may not have actually needed) and about 5,000 eye rolls from people who thought I was crazy, lazy or just a big baby ☺️👼

It turns out there was one thing standing between me and the answer and that, my friends, was everybody else – whose judgements slowly started to make me doubt

a) things would ever change and

b) that I wasn’t just a whiny person who was just too tired and weak to be the person I ever was before

So – I stopped talking. I started to listen to me – that’s exactly who eventually ended up finding the answer anyways (minus the co-pay, to boot). One central constantly growing and multiplying cause of about 16 different chronically relentless symptoms that vary from mild to debilitating and have prevented me from healing, growing and beginning the second life I so deserve.

So, it turns out that ‘google research’ paid off – it’s provided me with a specific way to get back to me and if it means giving up my wine & cheese (& gluten) for the next 6 months to a year then it means that it’s a challenge I am able to accept and overcome. Because every other challenge I’ve ever overcome has been assigned to me in some way – this one I asked for. It’d just be lame to give up now. After all, throughout this whole personal inventory via psychology.com, wikipedia and WebMD, I’ve learned things that have finally given me enough insight to finish my story. Because the only thing that was missing all along was my voice – “And I’ve been quiet for too long” 🗣🗣